Evil Eye

by Michael Slade

  "But why kill Jack?"

  "That we must find out. What nags me is the theft of Redcoat relics from the trunk. The Redcoat pictures, trophy box, and Ted Craven's Red Serge. X hates Dad as much as Mom. In different ways, both abandoned him/her. Dad's a dead Mountie beyond revenge. Did X slash Jack's Red Serge as a fetish?"

  "If Jack wasn't ripped to disembowel, why gut Dora in the mortuary?"

  "That we must find out."

  "To embark on that means flouting Chan's hands-off order."

  "I can't do that. Not 'the Last Honest Man.' "

  "What we need is something concrete to draw us in. Same as the old search warrant conundrum. You can't get a warrant without reasonable and probable grounds, and to get the grounds you've got to do the search. Catch-twenty-two."

  "Do you know what an irregular is?"

  "Someone who doesn't eat enough bran?"

  Robert winced. 'Try again/'

  "Someone who fights outside regular regiments of a military force. A partisan."

  "After the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, the British Colonial Army was in an Old Testament mood. The Duke of Cambridge, the army's commander-in-chief, pledged support for 'all who have the manliness to inflict the punishment.' Indians called the Imperial response 'the Devil's Wind.' Soldiers shed their uniforms for irregular garb: tweed coats, and turbans, and even a cloak made from the green baize of a billiards table in the Officers' Mess. Stripped of army livery, they also shed army constraints, and rode out into the country for revenge. Sepoys were lashed to cannon muzzles and blown to bits. Those who turned their backs on avengers were shot for insolence. Indians near the Bibighar, site of a massacre of British women and children, were forced to lick caked blood from the floor, then hanged. Once the Queen's Peace was restored, these 'irregulars' disbanded to reas-sume their former regiments as regular troops."

  "The moral being," Chandler said, "when the job is beyond a regular force, an irregular is needed?"

  "Precisely," said DeClercq.

  "Who do you have in mind?"

  "You asked me to edit Alex Hunt's manuscript. I'm impressed by how she ferrets out facts. Is she planning to research another true crime book?"

  JUJU

  Zinc sat in the TV room of their leased Vancouver home, waiting for Alex to return from house-hunting in Deep Cove, a video cued on the VCR.

  "Africa."

  He loved the word.

  He rolled it around on his tongue.

  Conjuring hundreds of memories of action, danger, and adventure from his youth.

  "Afffriiicaaa."

  When Zinc was eight his mom's Mum flew from London to Saskatchewan for Christmas. She stayed a month. Once Tom, his younger brother, was shuffled off to bed, Zinc would settle in with Granny for Juju Storytime. A full-fledged, card-carrying Daughter of the Empire, she read him terrifying tales from a battered book about "fuzzy-wuzzies and wogs."

  Rudyard Kipling. "The Mark of the Beast." Before we could stop him, Fleete dashed up the steps, patted two priests on the back, and was gravely grinding the ashes of his cigar-butt into the forehead of the red stone image of Hanuman . . .

  H. G. Wells. "Pollock and the Porroh Man." It was in a swampy village on the lagoon river behind the Turner Peninsula that Pollock's first encounter with the Porroh man occurred . . .

  W.W. Jacobs. "The Monkey's Paw." "To look at," said the sergeant-major, fumbling in his pocket, "it's just an ordinary little paw, dried to a mummy ..."

  Edward Lucas White. "Lukundoo." The swelling on his right breast had broken. Van Rieten aimed the center line of the light at it and we saw it plainly. From his flesh, grown out of it, there protruded a head, such a head as the dried specimens Etcham had shown us, as if it were a miniature of the head of a Balunda fetish-man. It was black, shining black as the blackest African skin; it rolled the whites of its wicked, wee eyes and showed its microscopic teeth between lips repulsively negroid in their red fullness . . .

  "Mum!" Zinc's mom barked. "Are you scaring the boy again?"

  White sons stained red with the Glories of Empire learned young you didn't fuck with the juju relics of conquered lands.

  Which made him wonder about the snakeskin pouch of knucklebones Nick had described.

  The chill of the front door opening shut down such thoughts in Zinc's mind.

  "Chinese food okay?" Alex called down the hall. "I hope you haven't slaved for hours over a hot stove. The

  house I saw's a possible if we both mortgage our souls to the devil."

  k Tm in the TV room/' Zinc called back.

  Alex appeared at the arch with a bag of Cantonese food in hand. "Good. A video by the fire. I hope it's a mushy romance."

  He tossed her the video case, which Alex caught in her free hand. Above the scene of Redcoats and Africans locked in epic battle—did she not recognize the young officer shouting in their midst? Yes, he was listed in the credits above Richard Burton—four looming letters carved with African symbols made up the title ZULU. The back of the case bore a review from Martin and Porter's Video Movie Guide:

  Several films have been made about the British Army and its exploits in Africa during the nineteenth century. Zulu ranks with the finest. A stellar cast headed by Stanley Baker and Michael Caine who charge through this story of an outmanned British garrison laid to siege by several thousand Zulu warriors. Based on fact, this one delivers the goods for action and tension.

  Alex frowned at Zinc and said, "Popcorn, bwana?" Zinc replied. "Do you know what an irregular is?"

  ZULU

  Friday, January 14, 1994

  Though Alex Hunt knew as much Colonial history as any royalist, her education was worthless in helping to solve this case. The exploits of Washington, Jefferson. Franklin, John Paul Jones, and Paul Revere were drilled into her, but she'd never pass a test on Lord Roberts of Kandahar or the Hero of Tel-el-Kebir. The Iron Duke of Wellington she knew, of course, and Gordon of Khartoum (thank you, Charlton Heston), but the gap was her

  Colonial history was taught from the point of view of the muzzle end of Redcoat guns.

  So it was back to school.

  The Department of Asian Studies boomed at UBC, but given the population of blacks, there was no Department of African Studies. Professor Ken Mbhele of the Department of History, however, came from Africa, so under a gloomy canopy threatening to dump snow on academe, Alex entered the Buchanan Tower between the Main Library and George F. Curtis Law School, and rode an elevator up to the twelfth floor. The elevator opened into a hall hung with grad class photos and a case boasting publications by faculty members. Mau Mau: A Lesson for Apartheid by Kenneth Mbhele caught Hunt's eye.

  A typist in the History office directed her to a line of doors behind the elevator bank. As Alex passed door 1218, then 1219, she spied the African mask at the end and hurried toward it. On the jamb was a nameplate: dr. k. mbhele. The scowl on the carved wooden mask was as hateful as gangsta rap lyrics.

  "Enter," said a thick South African voice when she knocked.

  The office was barely wide enough to stretch out her arms. Shelves lined the flanking walls from ceiling to floor, crammed with books, boxes, reviews, and loose papers. Windows beyond the desk looked down on Buchanan quad, then over the Museum of Anthropology to the peaks across English Bay. The man who turned from the desk to face the opening door was dressed in khaki, and in his midthirties, with a tight Afro and mustache and goatee framing his face. His dark skin was blotched with white, prompting Alex to wonder if Mbhele had the disease pop star Michael Jackson claimed lightened his color.

  "Yes?" said the professor.

  "Doctor, my name is Alex Hunt." She passed him her published book. "The office said you'd be in today, and that your specialty is African history. In working on a third book—the second will be published soon—I hit a snag. Writer-to-writer, I hope you'll give me insight on the subject."

  "Mau Mau?" asked Mbhele, one hand offering a chair

  while the other indicated several copies of his book
on the shelf.

  "Rorke's Drift."

  'Tm Zulu, Ms. Hunt. I'd dance if your interest was Isandlwana instead. Perhaps a British historian is more to your need?"

  "History is history, is it not?"

  "If you believe that, you also reject the need for Women's Studies. History is herstory, is it not? So can men not be trusted to canvass your female perspective adequately?"

  "I'm American, Doctor. We also faced British guns. The battle was fought in your country, so Zulu outlook interests me." She recognized Isandlwana from Burton's introduction to the Zulu video. "Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift. I want the whole picture."

  So, as Alex made notes, the African told her.

  "Isandlwana," Mbhele said, "was the most crushing defeat the British Army ever suffered battling 'native' troops. In January of 1879, Lord Chelmsford led 3,500 men across the Mzinyathi River at Rorke's Drift, moving into Zululand to camp on the grassy slopes below Mount Isandlwana. There Chelmsford made the mistake of splitting his column, and while he was away campaigning with half his men, on January 22nd 20,000 Zulus overran the British camp. Chelmsford returned to find his base a smoking defeat of burnt wagons, torn tents, rubbish, and ripped corpses, 1,357 of his troops dead on the battlefield.

  "You grasp the magnitude of our victory?" the Zulu said. "Armed with modern rifles and well-supplied, v/ith support from artillery and a rocket battery, versed in African warfare and camped on ground of their own choosing, the British were annihilated by a tribal army armed with spears, clubs, and shields. But do they trumpet Isandlwana in light of the 'glorious' Defense of Rorke's Drift?"

  Scribbling fast, Alex began a new page.

  "Chelmsford had left one company of the 24th Regiment behind to guard supplies at Rorke's Drift. King Cetshwayo had warned his army not to charge entrenched positions, but those held back in reserve from Isandlwana disobeyed. Over six hours of constant hand-

  to-hand battle with barricaded whites, Zulus died by the bloody hundreds storming the post. Despite overwhelming odds, the British held Rorke's Drift, so it—not Isan-dlwana—entered the English language as a synonym for Imperial heroics."

  "So Rorke's Drift was the minor battle that day?" Alex said.

  "Not to hear them tell it." By heart, the African recited a poem for Hunt:

  "Her sons in gallant story, Shall sound old England's fame, And by fresh deeds of glory Shall keep alive her name; And when, above her triumphs, The golden curtains lift— Be treasured long, in page and song, The memory of Rorke's Drift.

  "The British were literate. We Zulus weren't. They didn't want to lionize a major defeat, so Rorke's Drift portrays them as holding the Thin Red Line, while we're the butchers of Isandlwana who disemboweled the Redcoat dead."

  "What!" Alex said, almost dropping her pen.

  "When a Catholic encounters evil, he crosses himself. In the same way, Zulus believe killing someone in battle releases evil forces of 'blackness,' or umnyama. These can only be countered by cleansing rituals known as zila. To dissipate umnyama lingering about a corpse, the belly must be ripped open from sternum to groin. If the ritual's ignored and decomposition gasses swell the abdomen, a supernatural taint will attach to the slayer and swell him, too. Redcoats at Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift were disemboweled, which the British published as barbaric savagery. The truth is they chose the hour of battle, and while umnyama is always a danger, the night of January twenty-second to twenty-third was the new moon, a time when evil is so pervasive that if not cleansed it might curse the whole Zulu Nation."

  "What brought the Zulu War to an end?"

  "The Battle for Ulundi on the plain outside King Cetshwayo's royal kraal. Launching another invasion of

  Zululand. Chelmsford included 900 cavalrymen among his 5,000 troops. Nearing our capital, the British formed a hollow square, riflemen four deep with fixed bayonets spiking all four sides, field guns and Gatlings at the corners, and the 17th Lancers, colors flying, at center with a band. When 20,000 of us attacked the square, the four firing lines blasted sustained volleys, dropping us by the hundreds so not a single Zulu got within thirty yards of them. Then when our impi faltered, the lancers burst from the square, trot, to canter, to gallop, to a pounding cavalry charge, impaling us on their lances and cutting us down with their sabers to trample underfoot, until not a Zulu was left alive on the killing plain."

  *i see." Alex said.

  "Do you?" Mbhele replied. He pointed to an African map on back of his office door. "North of the Kalahari Desert is Lake Nganr David Livingstone arrived

  in 1849, he found Eden. News of this miracle of creation drew hunters from Britain. From 1865 on, average annual kill was 5.000 elephants. 3,000 lions, 3,000 leopards. 3,000 ostriches, and 250,000 other fur-bearing mammals. The carnage was even more frenzied than the massacre of North American bison. It didn't stop until four million kills left nothing worth the hunters' powder and shot. British Colonials converted Eden into tusks, skins, and plumes.

  K century later, to destroy Mau Mau rebels hiding in Kenya. British forces strafed the Aberdare Mountains with rockets, bullets, and bombs. No Mau Mau died, but the assault was devastating. Blind elephants with shattered tusks and severed trunks trampled everything they encountered. Enraged buffalos with jaws and ode shot off charged trees and rocks. Lurching, snorting rhinos dragging mangled limbs turned on the birds that cleaned them. The tiny velvet monkeys that fell from the trees in shock savaged their companions as the planes roared overhead.

  'it's fair to say." Mbhele said with irony m his voice. **the British respected Africa's wildlife as much as they did us. They're civilized on the surface"—pinky out. he held a phantom teacup to his lips—"but underneath, they're a vicious lot. The end result of their Zulu v was apartheid, torture, prison, and death. For his part in

  the Soweto Uprising of 1967, the first of the great convulsions to shake South Africa, my father wa$ jailed on Robben Island with Mandela, to die on a contraption called the Airplane, suspended from iron bars with arms and legs tied behind his back."

  Alex closed her book. 'Thank you for your insight, perspective, and time."

  "You haven't told me the snag you hit that brought you here?"

  "Fm hunting for a trophy box from Rorke's Drift. The name Rex Lancelot Craven is carved into the lid. If my source is correct, inside are two compartments lined with velvet. On red plush, the upper half has a bayonet and Victoria Cross. On black plush, the lower half has a Zulu club and snakeskin pouch. The pouch contains ten bones, each carved with an eye."

  Mbhele rapped his head as if to jog his memory. "I saw that box somewhere," he said. "Not the actual case, but a photograph."

  "Where?"

  "Patience, Ms. Hunt. My memory is human. I recall I saw the photo while researching Mau Mau history for my book. Yes. Now I remember. I saw the trophy box in back issues of The Times."

  From Mbhele's office in the Buchanan Tower, Alex walked to the adjacent Main Library, passing the Ladner Clock Tower, the most phallic prong of architecture she had ever seen. The Main Library dated from 1925, a neo-Gothic heap of cold gray stone, up the front steps of which Alex climbed, reaching double doors and a sign of the times: no rollerblading, no skateboarding in the library, to enter a medieval vault and climb again to the Main Concourse, a soaring banquet hall of a chamber with timber rafters way up there and card catalog and computers down here, the librarian at the central Information Desk directing her through a door beyond marked book stacks, stack level five, where she pushed through a turnstile and trudged up even more steps among sixty-seven miles of musty bookstacks creaking under the weight of 3 million books and 5.5 million nonbook items such as maps, recordings, and m ; -croforms. Turning right, then right again, Alex followed

  the path of government publications and microforms signs to the Microforms Desk.

  Under call number AW1 R103. the Main Library had a complete collection of The Times of London from 1785 to November 30, 1993.

  The Microforms librarian led her
to an alley lined with thousands of small brown boxes. "What year do you want?" he asked.

  Mbhele had told Alex the Mau Mau Rebellion lasted from 1952 to 1960. It was an antiwhite insurrection by the Kikuyu tribe of British-ruled Kenya, fought to drive Imperialists from the land so ancient customs could be restored. To prevent infiltration by British spies, Mau Mau was bound together by horrific ritual oaths used to ensure complete devotion to the cause. Bv the close of 1956, 100 whites, 2,000 African loyalists, and 11,000 rebels had been killed. Another 20.000 Kikuyu starved in detention camps, where "intensive efforts" were made to resubject them to the Queen.

  The year Nick was born seemed to Alex the best year to start.

  "Nineteen fifty-six." she replied.

  The librarian removed box The Times Reel 103 July 1955 to July 1956 from the shelf, then withdrew a spool of film. Hunt followed him into the stacks to a carrel where he threaded the spool through a microfilm reader. Seated facing the three-foot-square screen, she slowly turned the handle to advance through history, published day by day in The Times.

  "Magnify here," the man said, tapping a top center lever. "High to the left. Low to the right. Call if you want to print."

  He left Hunt to her work.

  So here she sat. right hand going round and round, tracking yet another black-versus-white war, eyes scanning every page for Mau Mau coverage linked to the trophy box.

  As column after column passed before her eyes, the American drew parallels to trends in her country: White Supremacists and armed militias and men hidden by sheets; the pounding hate of ghetto rap and rioting in Harlem, Watts, and Central L.A.; the breakdown of justice where whites and blacks on juries protect their own

  against conviction for attacking the other race, as tribal hatred kills the common good and white or black vigilantes fill the void, borders crumbling as the global exodus demands in, the spider's web of Internet a hatemonger's dream, population exploding as resources shrink, and bigots who don't feel All right, Jack, hunt for someone to blame.